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Aug 15, 2017 | 02:09

Trump faces business backlash

The CEOs of Under Armour Intel and president of Alliance for American Manufacturing followed Merck's chief executive footsteps and quit Trump's American Manufacturing Council after his delayed response to hate groups rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fred Katayama reports.

TRANSCRIPT +

The CEOs of Under Armour, Intel, and the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing followed the footsteps of Merck's chief executive and quit president Donald Trump's American Manufacturing Council.
They used Trump's favorite channel - Twitter - to announce their decisions.
Under Armour's Kevin Plank posted:
"I love our country & company. I am stepping down from the council to focus on inspiring & uniting through power of sport."
Intel's Brian Krzanich tweeted:
"I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues."
In another post, he said "There should be no hesitation in condemning hate speech or white supremacy by name. #Intel asks all our countries leadership to do the same."
Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing wrote:
"I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do."
Trump tweeted in response: "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!"
24/7 Wall Street's CEO Doug McIntyre:
(SOUNDBITE) DOUGLAS A. MCINTYRE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CEO, 24/7 WALL ST. (ENGLISH) SAYING:
"I think the critical point right now is whether the other CEOs who are still on the board remain on the board. It seems to me, right now, since they didn't quit immediately after all this, they're going to stay on, but that doesn't mean that this issue is over and that Trump won't make other public statements, because these demonstrations are now moving to other cities. And, you know, there is potential for disruption or even violence as it moves from place to place."
Over the weekend, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists groups gathered in Charlotesville, Virginia, to protest plans to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army in the U.S. Civil War.
During the rally, a Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring 19 others. Overall, more than 30 people were injured in separate incidents.
But it took president Donald Trump two days to condemn the violence and groups that caused it. He eventually did so under mounting pressure from both parties, Democrats and Republicans.

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